Deus Otiosis
by Annakovsky
Summary: Willow thinks about the Scoobies and what they've lost. Set during _Empty Places_.


They were trying so hard to be themselves, her and Xander, holding hands in the hospital. The old them would have joked about the whole lost eye thing, they knew. "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye," the old Willow would have said. And then she would have tried to find a spell to grow it back, or hacked into medical files to look at experimental treatments. She wouldn't have found anything, but she would've tried.  
  
Xander kept up the joking better, but that was always his Scooby specialty. Joking in the face of danger, check. But his heart wasn't in it either, the pirate jokes too easy and obvious, not even funny, though they both tried to smile. Willow knew that the joking had always been a façade, but it didn't use to be such a shoddy one. Like how the Summers house used to always look like it fit into the neighborhood, sunny and normal and bright. There may have been stakes and axes in the bedroom of the teenage girl who lived there, but things looked okay, and felt okay, really. It didn't use to have boarded up windows and flaking paint and teenagers sleeping on the floors. Like a weird suburban version of a crack house, but without the fun that might go along with crack. There used to be enough food in the fridge for everyone and enough hot water for showers, and enough love and trust too. Yeah, okay, hello, cheesy, but it was true. It was always a Hellmouth, but you didn't mind the monsters so much when you had your very own gang of Scoobies. Everyone else thought you were just the freakish losers, sure, but you knew you were the heroes.  
  
It had been nice to be the heroes. Willow didn't seem to have the energy for it anymore.  
  
When Xander fell asleep in the afternoon, all wonked out from his medication, Willow slipped into the bathroom, turned on the water and sobbed. For the eye, sure, Xander's beautiful brown eyes that she used to think she could stare into forever. For the boy who grew up to be maimed, not even in some heroic gesture, saving the world one more time, not dying in a flame of glory the way they all secretly thought they'd go one day, but because of a stupid plan his stupid best friends concocted because they were bored and frustrated.  
  
But she also cried for them. For the original Scoobies, for her and Xander and Giles and Buffy, and for what they'd lost. For the way Buffy nervously gave the medical information and then left, unable to be in the room with them. For the way Giles had been earlier when he'd heard about the eye, angry and tired and looking so old and worn down. For the way neither of them were here.  
  
She thought they'd always be themselves, always be friends, someday fighting the evil monster of prune juice in the Sunnydale nursing home. When was the last time she and Buffy had talked like best friends? When was the last time that Buffy had acted like Xander and Willow even mattered?   
  
She wondered if maybe they needed to go on a quest. They were the protectors, the heroes, the knights of the dining room table. They did quests, right? It could be like the Wizard of Oz. They'd probably just misplaced all this stuff, and could go to the Wizard and ask him to find Xander's eye and Willow's innocence and Buffy's heart and Giles's temper. His temper because he kept losing it, get it, ha ha ha.   
  
Didn't most people mature into better people? Like, you got out of high school and life got so much cooler and everyone grew up to be nicer and kinder and more responsible versions of themselves? Mellow and change?   
  
They hadn't gotten better, Willow knew that for sure. Knew that about herself the most. She used to be a loser, hated herself, thought everyone else would hate her too when they found out what she was really like. But she was kind and eager and loved her friends. She wasn't some black-eyed fiend who hated everybody and tried to destroy the world. She was the sidekick, not the bad guy! Sure, she kind of joked about it now, a little, because she didn't know what else to say. "I flayed a guy," she'd said to Wesley in LA, like it was no big deal. Like it was sort of funny. Ha, ha, little Willow flayed a guy, hi-larious.   
  
Yeah, 'cause Tara dead and Warren dead and Giles beat up and the Magic Box in pieces and Xander bleeding was just a big funny practical joke! April Fools, everybody!   
  
Willow used to be really sensitive about anyone calling her a nerd. Like Percy had that one time at that party, freshman year. "Hello, dated a musician!" she had said afterwards, when Buffy was sympathizing with her. Like Oz had made her cool, by being in a band and being a werewolf and seeing something special in the most loser-y loser of them all. She used to think that having superpowers and being maybe a little evil, a little not-responsible, not-Old-Reliable would be a lot better than being just plain old stupid boring naïve loser Willow.   
  
She didn't know that being super-powered Evil Willow would also make her friends not quite meet her eyes, make her feel old and tired and dead inside, like she wanted to take a long nap somewhere else. Siberia, maybe, or one of those little islands in the South Pacific that a ship only comes to twice a year. Where they haven't even heard of vampires or hell dimensions, or if they have you don't speak the language so they can't talk to you about it and ask you to do a locator spell for the three hundred millionth time.   
  
It wasn't just her that was different, though, and that made her the saddest. There was Xander out there, one-eyed Xander, heavier and sadder and worn around the edges. Looking like he felt more useless and less a part of the group every year. At least before he had had Anya with him on the sidelines, was doing normal happy grown-up things, getting engaged, having a steady job that he was good at. Willow used to think that maybe he would get out the best of all of them, the happiest, the least dead. Figured he and Anya would settle down, have kids, a mortgage, a dog. She, Willow, was definitely going to be alternative-lifestyle girl, with the gay thing and the witchcraft thing, but even so it was kind of nice to think that Xander would be out there being a regular person, doing regular things. Joining the PTA, coaching Little League, complaining about how much gas costs these days. Of course, since she and Xander would be friends forever, he'd live next door to her probably, with a son and daughter who would call her Aunt Willow and eat the chocolate chip cookies she'd make especially for them. Maybe she shouldn't be so surprised that it wasn't going to turn out that way – just surviving was an achievement on the Hellmouth, and after all, there had also been an Aunt Tara in that imaginary scenario. In Willow's sunshine and rainbows and puppies future life, back when she used to imagine a happy future at all.  
  
Now she didn't think about happy futures. When she used the fantasy escape route these days, it was to think of what she could have done to get away from all this. How she probably should have gone to Oxford or Harvard or heck, even UCLA. She and Buffy and Xander would've kept in touch, emailed and called, and maybe eventually just naturally drifted apart the way normal people did when they went to college. Maybe then she wouldn't have to see this version of Buffy, the double-resurrected general from hell who didn't even seem to think of any of them as human beings except Spike, ironically, and even that only when she felt like it. Wouldn't have to see Buffy standing in the middle of her living room yelling at all her so-called friends about how they don't do enough for her, when all they've done is sacrifice their whole lives to help her fight evil. Wouldn't have had to see Buffy helpless and hopeless and like a horrible parody of all her own worst qualities.   
  
Maybe they should all have just taken off after high school, fresh in the glow of defeating the Mayor, blowing up the school, surviving. Buffy could've gone to Northwestern like her mom wanted, and Willow could've gone somewhere Ivy League and Xander could've gone anywhere, followed Willow, gone into construction in Boston or LA or wherever. Gone to Timbuktu, for heaven's sake, if he'd felt like it. The farther away from here the better. Giles could've gone back to England and been happy there, like he'd wanted for awhile now, though the Hellmouth kept sucking him back. Well, the Scoobies kept sucking him back, didn't they? Raising what ought to be left buried and just needing him, all the time. Wanting him to be their father, their mentor, their teacher, the grownup who solved things for them. Until they seemed to have sucked all the love and gentleness and sheer solid reliableness out of him. He used to be the rock, the one who looked at them and saw them and loved them, who was always there, understanding. But now he just seemed old and tired and couldn't fix anything anymore. And distant, acting so strange and cold that they had thought he was The First.   
  
Maybe everyone was actually the First, Willow thought. Maybe she really had destroyed the world, killed everyone, and now she was in a special hell dimension just for her, where everyone she loved was a shadow of their former selves, like someone had extracted all the good from them and left the dregs. They all seemed so empty and tired, so joyless, that they may as well be in hell. It's not like she didn't deserve that, after all.  
  
But freshman year hadn't been that bad, so if in her fantasy she let them all stick around Sunnydale post-high-school, the other option was not raising Buffy. Obviously a big one on the list of regrets. Sure, they had thought she was in a hell dimension, but had they known that for a fact? No, they had not. It was a mystical death and all, but even considering that, it's pretty horrible to assume that your friend who just died went to hell. What kind of a person thinks that about their best friend? Especially when it's Buffy, the hero, the popular girl who had chosen to be friends with Willow over Cordelia that first day of school, who had killed her boyfriend to save the world, who had wrestled devil-dogs just so they could all have a good time at the prom.   
  
In the end, had she really been thinking about rescuing Buffy when she raised her? She thought she had, but had she really just wanted to have that power, to save the day, to be admired and loved for bringing Buffy back? Or just wanted to have Buffy back, period, because she missed her? That summer had been awful, Buffy gone, Giles so sad, Spike distraught, Dawn crushed. Everyone talking around the subject, and their voices getting all odd-sounding when it was impossible to avoid. She didn't know how they looked at those times because she was always too busy staring at her shoes and concentrating very hard on things like breathing evenly and, you know, not bawling. One time Willow had caught Spike crying in his crypt, sobbing with his hands over his face. Spike wasn't supposed to cry! At least, not over something that actually was horrible, only over pathetic things like when Drusilla cheated on him. He was evil, and macho, and cool. He thought it was emasculating that he couldn't drink the blood of the innocent anymore, and now he was crying because the Slayer was dead? If Spike was crying, and didn't even care that Willow had walked in on him doing it, then things really were as awful as they felt. The only thing that had kept her and Xander (and Tara and Anya, but they almost didn't count, the Scooby in-laws) going was the knowledge that they were going to do that spell when they got everything together and the time was right. If she had thought that Buffy was really gone for good… well, she couldn't bring herself to think that, that was why she had done the spell in the first place, right?   
  
Maybe then, if she had just left Buffy dead, they could have all moved on. Giles had, going back to England. She thought that he probably resented them making him come back, another layer of emotion in the mix of his anger with Willow for pulling that stunt, and his joy at having Buffy back. You go through those stages of grieving, right? Willow had seen Giles go through the denial and the anger and the sadness and… bargaining? She couldn't remember them all – after Professor Walsh had gone all mad scientist, psychology class had sort of lost its steam – but Giles had moved to acceptance. Sad acceptance, maybe, but he knew this would happen. Every Watcher has to know that someday their Slayer will die, and Giles was dealing with it. Moving back home, going forward, until Willow had pulled him back into the badness that was Sunnydale. Of course he was glad, so glad, that Buffy was alive, but he must've been thinking that he would just have to go through it again, and wishing that he didn't have to. Wishing that things had just been allowed to be normal for once, with people staying dead and you grieving and going on with life.   
  
And as if the amount of badness with the resurrection hadn't been enough already, what with how it had made everyone hate everyone else, it also seemed to have caused this rift in cosmic balance that allowed the First to pull its whole bid for power. Or whatever that was. So they were facing the ultimate battle, with the worst evil ever, the primal evil, all because of Willow. Again. That's two years in a row that the evil has been her fault. Go me, she thought bitterly. I'm the evil that keeps on giving. Slayers shouldn't even have to fight the First – sure, they're superheroes, but they're small scale. They're not the First Good or whatever the cosmic equivalent is to balance out the First Evil. Buffy's supposed to be slaying vampires, taking back the night, not playing judge to the whole universe. Isn't that someone else's jurisdiction?  
  
If Willow had ever believed in God, she wouldn't now. Or maybe it wasn't so much that she didn't believe in God as that she was very, very angry with him (or her) for letting all this crap go down. Shouldn't he (or she) be fighting the First? Shouldn't he (or she) be involved, be in touch, give them a call sometime to give them a hint as to what to do? The Powers That Be (or whatever they called them) seemed to be talking to Angel, like, every five minutes. So they couldn't make the two hour drive over to Sunnydale?   
  
Whatever. Fuck them.  
  
In the meantime, Willow would wash her face and go back out to hold Xander's hand, try to make jokes and pretend that she was still the Willow Rosenberg who snuck over to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas every year, yellow-crayon Willow from kindergarten, the Willow Xander needed. The Willow who could joke about death and hell and evil and missing eyes, like those things still seemed funny to her. Nothing really seemed funny anymore. One apocalypse too many for them, and at 21 she was too old for this kind of thing.   
  
She remembered reading once, for the Mythology class she took before things got so bad, about the concept of retired gods - there was some Latin term for it, for when the old gods, who used to be active and important, become old and irrelevant. In Mesopotamia there were myths where the old gods just wanted to sleep, but the young, energetic gods kept making too much noise and waking them up. The myths were supposed to be a critique of the older gods and their inactivity, their lack of vitality compared with the young gods. In the end a young god has to be sent out to kick some butt and fight the forces of chaos, since the old gods won't do it anymore.   
  
She was so tired and things were so noisy. Let the potentials run around training in the backyard. Let Andrew make videos telling all their glamorous adventures. Let Dawn joke around and get excited about sword-fighting. But let her and Buffy and Xander and Giles rest already.   
  
Maybe if they were lucky they'd all die in the fight. Maybe, if they sacrificed themselves in battle, all of them could go to that paradise where Buffy had been, where it was supposed to be so great. Maybe there Giles would be driving them home from the library in his little Citroen on a Saturday afternoon, and they'd make him put on Top 40 radio and would all sing along loudly, off-key on purpose to be funny. And Giles would act annoyed but then he'd get that little smile on his face when he thought they weren't looking, all affectionate and amused. Maybe they'd be in Buffy's living room watching movies and eating popcorn, and making fun of Xander's rental choices. Maybe there she'd be Willow again, just nerdy loser Willow - that would be okay - and Xander'd have both his eyes, and Buffy would still love them, still mean it when she called them her best friends. Maybe Giles would smile like he used to when Ms. Calendar was alive, before evil got so real and fighting it got so hard. Maybe there they could rest.  
  
Maybe there'd be puppies and sunshine and rainbows.  
  
Maybe. 


End file.
